


An Alternate History

by willowoak_walker



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Gen, Imported from Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-07-26 18:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7584460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoak_walker/pseuds/willowoak_walker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A description of what might have happened if Laurens hadn't died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Alternate History

Laurens lets the troops go by. He’s not happy about it, (in a letter to Lafayette on the subject he curses for an entire page) but he does. Washington commends him for his responsibility. 

Laurens finishes his studies in New York. Hamilton scolds him into summoning his wife and daughter. Martha dies before she receives Laurens’ letter, but her family put Frances on a ship with a maid. Laurens is the single father of a seven year old girl who knows him not at all. Eliza takes pity on him, or rather on her, and becomes nearly a surrogate mother to Frances.

Laurens’ father demands he come back to South Carolina. Laurens leaves Frances with Eliza and goes South alone. Laurens starts charities and an abolitionist society. One of his fellow abolitionists tears him to pieces about the way he treats his personal slaves. After his initial fury, he is shamed into doing better. 

Laurens gains a following in the small farmers upstate. When the Constitutional Convention is called, his father pulls enough strings to get him sent as a junior delegate. Laurens reunites with Hamilton, Eliza, and the children. Frances is polite to him. Laurens thinks that, after all, that’s enough.

Laurens talks Hamilton’s six-hour speech down to four and a half. (No-one will accept even an elected monarchy, Ham, call it something else.) (Let me say that bit; it sounds better coming from the South.) Laurens _flips out_ about the notion of counting slaves in the voter’s census. He gets talked into accepting the 1/5th compromise because he wants the US to be a functional nation.

Laurens writes ten of the Federalist Papers. He might have written more if he hadn’t been busy helping Eliza edit Hamilton’s. (Frances shows him her drawings, reads him her translations. He tells her, forcing it out through his father’s lies, that she’s doing well. That he’s _proud_ of her. She doesn’t know how much it costs him.) 

Laurens badgers Washington about running for President. Laurens gets a seat in the House, and writes the House’s speech of greeting to the President. Laurens yells at Hamilton about the stupid way Hamilton’s treating Clinton. (You didn’t have doubts about his military competence during the war, Ham, you have better things to fight about!) 

Laurens canvases for votes for Hamilton’s debt plan. (A couple people agree just to get him to stop.) Laurens keeps Hamilton company while Eliza is away upstate with the children. Laurens confronts Hamilton about his affair. (-Don’t tell Eliza. -I won’t have to if you _stop_.)

Laurens asks Burr if there’s anything he can do to help get Burr’s abolition bill through the New York Senate. (-You’re from _South Carolina_! -Anything I can do.) It fails. Laurens has a depressive collapse. (Start with small things, Eliza says.) Laurens manages to get a law legalizing manumission in wills across the country through the House by framing it as a property issue.

Laurens looses his seat in the House. Washington sends him to England to try to negotiate the withdrawal of British soldiers from forts in Ohio, American trading rights with the British Empire, and the end of British captures of American trade ships. He was also supposed to negotiate payment for the slaves the British had freed, but he didn’t. The Jeffersonians hated the treaty ( _Damn John Laurens! Damn everyone that won’t damn John Laurens! Damn everyone that won’t put lights in his window and sit up all night damning John Laurens!_ ), but it passed. 

Hamilton had a _field day_ at the Jeffersonians for that one. 

Laurens manages to keep Hamilton aimed (mostly) at the Jeffersonians throughout the first Adams term. He tears into the Alien and Sedition acts, though. ( _This is a gross violation of those principles upon which our nation was so lately founded … Shall we destroy the very freedoms we fought for?_ ) His apparent swing toward the Democratic-Republicans wins him a seat in the Senate. 

Adams wins a second term, with Jefferson as his Vice President again. He doesn’t repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts. Laurens and Madison team up to try to destroy them. Hamilton publishes the Adams rant. Adams arrests him. There is much generalized uproar. Hamilton takes it to the Supreme Court, who declare the law unconstitutional. Adams doesn’t run for a third term.


End file.
